The game asks for the result of the operation and repeats the correct one thus reinforcing learning.
Play addition, subtraction, multiplication and division through 10 increasing level-of-difficulty levels.
It’s included a shape recognition game will help your kid familiarize with the basic geometric shapes 2D and 3D (20 different shapes).

Available in Spanish and English. Very useful to learn the numbers in Spanish.

The game asks for the result of the operation and repeats the correct one thus reinforcing learning.
Play addition, subtraction, multiplication and division through 10 increasing level-of-difficulty levels.
It’s included a shape recognition game will help your kid familiarize with the basic geometric shapes 2D and 3D (20 different shapes).

Available in Spanish and English. Very useful to learn the numbers in Spanish.

]]>Cupid Madness : Rain of heartshttps://vialgames.com/cupid-madness-rain-of-hearts/
https://vialgames.com/cupid-madness-rain-of-hearts/#respondFri, 16 Feb 2018 15:48:24 +0000http://vialgames.com/?p=193Cupid has gone crazy, have a lot of fun catching the hearts that rain from the sky.

So the target of travel all the map with the dog is to unlock 6 mini games, which are those mini game ? Another time I use my Indie blood to design them in a paper notebook.

Catch the ball

Catch the frisbee

Rodeo

Clean the dog

Agility circuit

Race against time

Now nothing to say about them. I still have to design them but just with the title you can imagine more or less something about them.

Surprises

The game map is not a plain map, it has some zones with trees other with rocks and other that have some surprises that try to difficult the search of the items.

Here it’s for example a first design on paper of a Spider Maze:

]]>https://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-mini-games-and-surprises/feed/06. Designing the gamehttps://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-design/
https://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-design/#respondMon, 30 Oct 2017 18:02:54 +0000http://vialgames.com/?p=154You can move a dog in a nature scenery. Wow!!! what a great game!!!

All right we need some kind of story, or target to get, or adventure to pass, or something must happen to our dog cause if not this will be the most boring game ever. This is game designing. I need to design the game, what will happen, how gain and loses live, how gain points, how the game is ended and so on.

Continuing with my Indie style I used as game design studio a paper notebook:

I decided to divide the game in three independent stages. Each one has its own beginning and its own end, so if I haven’t enough time to finish stage 3 I equally will have a finished game but with only two stages.

Stage 1 (100% developed)

Mission: Our dog basically must find three items: food bowl, water bowl and its bed.

This first stage is very easy to play. You must travel by all the map til you find these three items avoiding being eaten by fierce tigers or bitten by ugly spiders and more surprises. Problems: Yes, there are some problems cause while traveling you also can be attacked by terrible “mosquito-bees”.

All items are visible over the map and the dog just need to touch them to get them.

In this stage the dog has 100 points of live. Enemies rest points. Water, food, cookies and bones add points.

Stage 2 (0% developed)

Mission: Our dog must find six items to unlock 4 mini games

In this stage the dog has 100 points of live. Enemies rest points. Water, food, cookies and bones add points.

Items that help the dog to gain points of live or experience will be visible over the map.

The six items needed to unlock the mini games will be hidden under the map and the dog must dig in indicated hot spots to find them. When the dog digs a hot-spot sometimes it’ll find an item but sometimes it’ll find nothing or even a potential enemy.

[Optional: if I’ve enough time for developing it] In this stage every time you find an item you gain some experience. There’s an experience indicator. You can share it in social networks.

Stage 3 (0% developed)

Mission: Our dog must find eight items to unlock 2 mini games

Same dynamic than stage 2.

————————–

Although I’m going to reuse whole 2D map background and main theme I want that every stage have its own scenery elements. Every stage will have its own map.

Today on Monday, October 30th, 2017 I’ve just finished stage 1 so I’ve a lot of work to do before the end of the year.

I’d like to have all stages developed (game finished) on November, 30

In december I’ll test the game, fix whatever needed and when finished I’ll launch it. First step: publish it in Microsoft game platform.

]]>https://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-design/feed/05. Map of the gamehttps://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-map-of-the-game/
https://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-map-of-the-game/#respondMon, 30 Oct 2017 11:26:36 +0000http://vialgames.com/?p=127Well, at this point I’ve got a lot of very original, nice and fun hand drawn, scanned and painted 2D animals for the game and then the question was what I’m going to do with them? I need a map.

For this game I want to create a 2D ortographic map (not isometric) with protagonist moving free in natural horizontal and vertical axes.

For create a map I need more 2D sprites of all kind of nature elements (we like animals living in nature so an urban scenery was not considered). I’ve to choice basically between these options:

More hand-drawn elements

Realistic elements (including real pictures)

Vector elements (Digitally designed sprites)

I liked to see the contrast between the hand-drawn (by my 4 years old daughter) animals walking and living in a good-looking nature scenery. I decided to use well designed vector graphics merged with some real pictures cutout elements.

As an Indie (very,very Indie) solo-developer my budget for the game was small (very, very small). I know I’ve to spend some money in graphic elements, music and sound effects in addition to other launch and publication costs. My budget is about US$ 200. As I’ve said I’m very Indie I’ll not be really a problem for the big ones.

My first step was to pay for the membership of a site full of graphics, vectors, sprites sheets where after become a member you can download all what you want. This way I’ve got grass, trees, bushes, rocks, plants, flowers, sky and other items that have a very professional look.

After editing here it’s how looks like one of the nature elements sprite sheets:

And here it’s our dog (still full white) in an animation test with other animals also in movement in a picture captured directly form Unity editor:

]]>https://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-map-of-the-game/feed/04. More animalshttps://vialgames.com/more-animals/
https://vialgames.com/more-animals/#respondSun, 29 Oct 2017 10:35:29 +0000http://vialgames.com/?p=108After my daughter saw the dog in movement she quickly told me she wanted to draw more animals for the game. We started to talk about bad spiders, terrible tigers, birds, horses, cows, a cat as a friend and so on.

Here there are several original draws of animals. I’ve used some of them in the game:

Once scanned my daughter also wanted to paint some of them :

And here it’s the final result:

Another example is the “Mosquito-Bee” (fly animation) that it’s always ready to bite our protagonist:

]]>https://vialgames.com/more-animals/feed/03. A white dog is boringhttps://vialgames.com/game-of-white-dog-is-boring/
https://vialgames.com/game-of-white-dog-is-boring/#respondFri, 27 Oct 2017 16:07:20 +0000http://vialgames.com/?p=91When finally we got our dog drawn on a common A4 paper, next step was my daughter painted it. After several tries we got one dog painted we both liked it.

Once scanned we finally got the protagonist of the game:

I digitalized it with an old EPSON scan managed by an older Windows XP Pc.

But it was just the beguinning, now I’ve got a 2D sprite of a nice dog. Really I can move it through the game scene but it’s very strange a dog walking without moving its legs. I need animations for a dog that was born on a white paper.

I used Adobe Photoshop Elements cause it’s an easy to use image editor that allows you to work with image layers, too.

After several cut-paste here it’s our dog wagging the tail:

]]>https://vialgames.com/game-of-white-dog-is-boring/feed/02. Which dog ?https://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-which-dog/
https://vialgames.com/game-of-dog-which-dog/#respondFri, 27 Oct 2017 08:44:30 +0000http://vialgames.com/?p=63So I decided to make a game about a dog and its adventures, good, but which dog ?

I not just need an image or picture of a dog cause I really need a 2D sprite of a dog and all its animations to use them in the game editor.

I could choose between several options:

Search internet for 2D sprite sheet all ready (free or not)

Ask some designer to do it for me

Try to draw the dog myself

As a “poor” solo-developer which option do you think I choose? YES, I draw the dog my self.

That was a big problem cause I have any kind of ability to draw it. So I search for a tutorial til finally I find this great one in a youtube channel called Art for kids hub. There are a lot of different kind of dogs to draw so we had to choose one, my daughter took the difficult decision. it’ll be a Dachshund.

My idea was to draw the dog I and my daughter together and it was really fun. This is the video tutorial “How to draw a Dachshund”: